Like A Loose Garment

As I approach 35 years without a cigarette this bit of fine writing by Dan Chaon describes that most miserable of times better than anything I've ever read: "Without nicotine, his brain seemed murky with circling unfocused dread, and the world itself appeared somehow more unfriendly - emanating, he couldn't help but think, a soft glow of ill will."

From an emotional standpoint giving up drugs and alcohol was the one thousand pound beast and undisputed champion of the world, but quitting smoking was much more of a physical meat-grinder.  I could have committed murder several times a day during the first few weeks and I fought back powerful, insistent cravings for months.  To this day I have smoking dreams with much more regularity than I have drinking/drugging dreams.  I joke - but maybe not - that if I was given a month to live I wouldn't pick up a drink but I'd rush - at high speed - to the nearest convenience store for a pack of Winston 100s.  At odd and unexpected times I'll catch myself looking at someone exhaling a stream of blue smoke right out of their lungs and I can feel that wonderful tightness in my chest, the vague lightheadedness and sense of well-being that the nicotine produced.  

Whew.

Fundamental:  A leading or primary principle . . . which serves as the groundwork of a system; an essential part.

"In A.A. we forget about the future.  We know from experience that as time goes on, the future takes care of itself.  Everything works out well, as long as we stay sober.  All we need to think about is today."

I do believe that our experience begins to show us that life is full of twists and turns and unexpectedness.  Some things unfold smoothly with a predictable rhythm and others leave us standing there, bemused, wondering how the hell we ended up where we are.  Go with it.  Go with the flow.

"All is fundamentally well.  That does not mean that all is well on the surface of things.  Wearing the world as a loose garment means not being upset by the surface wrongness of thing, but feeling deeply secure in the fundamental goodness and purpose in the universe."

I've always loved the Loose Garment analogy.  I found it helpful to take off the undersized Spandex onesie that shrank in the dryer I was wearing.  I like visualizing my spirit floating up and out of my body, looking down on the physical part of me while being able to see everything happening all around me, all the complexities and vagaries of life.  When I'm in my head I have no overview, no perspective.